Wrongly Convicted, Ireland Makes Case For Compensation

Watch: Police Interrogation Of Kenneth Ireland In 1987

Portion of the 1987 interrogation of Kenneth Ireland, who was wrongly convicted of murder and rape. Ireland played the video at a hearing before the state claims commissioner, who will decide if Ireland will receive up to $8M in compensation.

Portion of the 1987 interrogation of Kenneth Ireland, who was wrongly convicted of murder and rape. Ireland played the video at a hearing before the state claims commissioner, who will decide if Ireland will receive up to $8M in compensation.

HARTFORD — Kenneth Ireland — an innocent man convicted of the brutal rape and murder of a Wallingford mother — was convinced he'd die in prison, of old age or, more likely, of violence.

Every waking moment of his 21 years in prison he had a knot of fear in his stomach. He was surrounded by violence and by violent people — murderers, rapists, armed robbers.

"Not one minute in my 21 years was I not afraid," Ireland told state Claims Commissioner J. Paul Vance Jr. Tuesday during a hearing at the state Legislative Office Building. Ireland is seeking $5.5 million to $8 million in damages for wrongful incarceration. The state has indicated Ireland's request is in line with what another wrongfully convicted man, James Tillman, received and is not opposing the request.

There was constant violence in the prisons in which Ireland was held. In Connecticut, it was his fellow inmates whom he feared. At the infamous Wallens Ridge prison in Virginia, where he and other Connecticut inmates were sent in the late 1990s to ease prison overcrowding, he feared the guards too.

Ireland described for Vance and about three dozen others in the hearing room how he constantly had to be on alert, how he had to assess his cellmate and the others around him.

Did they have mental illness that might cause them to suddenly lash out? Were they sociopaths who could explode into a rage and challenge him to a fight for something as trivial as how Ireland responded to their request that he trade ice cream flavors in the prison cafeteria?

He described how a prison unit could turn in a second from relative peace to a gang fight with 20 or 30 inmates brandishing sharpened pieces of steel, and how he learned to cope.

"You get out of the way, get against the wall and hope you're not one of the targets," he said. "There's not much you can do."

Ireland, 44, was convicted in 1989 of the murder and rape of Barbara Pelkey, a 30-year-old mother of four killed in 1986 in Wallingford. His faith in police and the criminal justice system was destroyed when at age 20 a jury found him guilty of the crime, a judge sentenced him to 50 years in prison and subsequent appeals failed.

In helping Ireland tell his story, Bridgeport attorney William M. Bloss had Ireland start at the beginning — the day in September 1987 that two Wallingford detectives arrived at his mother's Manchester home to say they wanted to ask him questions about the drowning of his friend a year earlier. The detectives were lying.

The conversation turned quickly to Pelkey's murder and the detectives told Ireland they thought he was involved. A portion of the videotaped interrogation, shown during the hearing, shows the detectives telling Ireland they have all kinds of evidence against him and that others have implicated him. A shocked Ireland proclaimed his innocence.

As it turned out, Ireland noted Tuesday, the only person telling the truth that day in that cigarette smoke-filled interrogation room was him.

The state had no physical evidence at the trial, Ireland told Vance, but relied on testimony from two witnesses who'd sought a cash reward the state offered for information leading to the arrest of Pelkey's killer.

The Monday after Thanksgiving in 1989, a jury convicted Ireland of felony murder and sexual assault. In January 1990 a judge sentenced him to 50 years, rejecting Ireland's claims of innocence and instead castigating him for not accepting responsibility for the crime.

Prison was even harder for Ireland because he'd been convicted of sexual assault. "If you're convicted of a sexual offense against a woman, or even worse, against a child … you become an immediate target," he said.

Ireland did his best to avoid trouble. He signed up for college classes, art classes and music classes. He read any book he could get his hands on. He even read accounting books.

"I was locked in this dark, dreary place with violence raging around me, but I could get into a book and escape with a character … explore a life I couldn't explore," he said.

He learned to play the bass and the guitar and joined a prison band that was open only to model prisoners.

"It was an excellent way to avoid the chaos going on outside that door behind you," he said.

But he still expected to die in prison. He saw other inmates get their hopes up when their lawyers took appeals, and then he'd see those inmates' dreams get crushed.

His expectations were not high when two lawyers from the Connecticut Innocence Project, Michael Lefebvre and Karen Goodrow, who is now a Superior Court judge, visited him in prison to talk about his case.

They began to collect information. And a new generation of police officers and detectives in Wallingford worked to assess the evidence against Ireland and to process new DNA evidence. "They went out of their way to help us out," Ireland said of Wallingford police.

A bit of DNA found on a slide at the medical examiner's office yielded enough DNA to allow a new analysis with technology that did not exist in 1989. On July 31, 2009, a Friday, the lawyers, an investigator and an intern went to the prison to deliver the news to Ireland that the test results exonerated him.

"The DNA evidence came back and you're going home on Wednesday," Ireland said the lawyers told him. He still didn't believe them. "I was convinced I was still going to die in prison."

True to his lawyers' word, the following Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2009, New Haven Superior Court Judge Richard Damiani ordered Ireland immediately released. Two weeks later the judge dismissed the charges. Ireland was 39.

On March 23, 2012, New Haven Superior Court Judge David P. Gold sentenced Kevin Benefield to 60 years in prison for the rape and murder of Pelkey. The same DNA evidence that exonerated Ireland linked Benefield to the crime.

Since his release, Ireland told Vance, he has been trying to catch up on the life he missed. He delights at walking down every aisle in grocery stores and each day considers what many people consider an annoyance to be a delight.

"I remember being stopped in traffic on 84, gridlock and traffic, and thinking 'this is great,' " he told Vance, eliciting laughter from the audience. "It's better than where I was six months ago."

He said his lawyers and others have helped him adapt to life outside prison. He got a job at the Capitol Region Education Council as a bookkeeper, where he is putting those accounting skills he learned in prison to work.

Although he's looking forward to a happy life, he still reflects on the time that was taken from him. "Fax machines were invented and became obsolete while I was in prison," he said.

Ireland said being accused of murder was a nightmare. At the end of the hearing, Bloss asked him to think again about that statement.

"I wish it was a nightmare because nightmares you wake up from," Ireland responded.

Vance thanked Ireland "for allowing all of us … to hear your story," then added, "I'm sorry that you had to go through this."

Vance said he will make a decision on Ireland's and other wrongfully imprisoned people's claims by the end of the year.

After the hearing, while talking with reporters, Ireland said he hopes to use the money he receives to travel and to experience some of what he missed during his 20s. "I would love to go some of the places I've only read about," he said.

The money will also provide some comfort as he ages. A statement he received from Social Security, his mother, Cherry Cooney, testified, indicated his benefits would be $1.50 a month.

As for those who wronged him, he said, "I'm not going to live in the past."

He said he plans to continue enjoying freedom, being outdoors and making his own decisions.